The Earl and the Wedding Crasher (The Brides of Elderglen #3)

Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

W hy Louisa thought to herself as she sat upon her bed. Why can I not sleep? Why must I be trapped in my thoughts with him? There is no point to it, why can I not just forget him and continue as before?

It was no use though. She could not sleep, when she laid her head on the pillow all she could think of were the children and her husband and the way they all made her feel. She was failing at being a good countess or a good guardian, she was even failing at being a particularly good wife. All she could think was how much she wanted to hide away in her old room where no one had any expectations of her and therefore she could not let anyone down.

There was no use crying over spilled milk or fractured dreams, however. Louisa searched for her robe and pulled it on so that she was presentable should any servants come across her during their late night duties, and slipped out of her room.

One of the first things that she had done when she had arrived at Pembroke Manor was to locate the library. It was further from her rooms than she would have preferred and she would need to spend her allowance on increasing the fiction available. Still, there were a few tomes that she had not yet read and it was as good a way as any to while away the hours between midnight and dawn.

She found a lovely wingback armchair and settled herself in it with the Sicilian Romance a book that immediately captured her imagination. She was deep into the trials of the lady, fleeing from a dreadful Marquis and beset with horrors on all sides when she felt certain, with a slow shiver of dread down her spine, that she could hear a strange ghostly crying.

Am I imagining things? Louisa thought, putting her book down in her lap and tilting her head to listen. This cannot be happening. Ghosts almost certainly do not exist, and if they did there is no possibility that Mrs. Brooks would allow them to continue to abide in Pembroke.

There was a slight pause, just long enough for her to convince herself that yes she had been imagining, she was tired and overwrought and had been reading far too much gothic literature and it was overheating her brain when she heard it again.

It was a noise that pierced her heart, the loud helpless sobbing of a child who could not be comforted.

" The children," Louisa said out loud, leaping to her feet and barely noticing the book tumbling from her lap onto the floor. "Oh it is the children!"

She knew the way well enough to find it, running down the hall as swiftly and quietly as she could until she was at the nursery and then opening the door as softly as she could manage. It would not do the poor mites any good to barge in loudly if they were already upset, and little Kenneth was easily startled.

The nightlights were lit, flooding the room with a soft warm glow. Louisa found both of the children crying, wrapped around each other in a tight miserable embrace on one little bed where Abigail had clearly forsaken her own bed to be closer to her brother.

Cedric was standing in the middle of the room. For the barest of moments Louisa wondered if he was the cause of the upset, but she could see a crease of pained concern on his face and his hands were reached out to the children as though he were not quite sure what to do with them but wanted so badly to help them.

"Hush now," he was saying as she entered the room. "You are safe. I am here. Stop your crying. It is all right."

"I want my mother ," Abigail said in what was very nearly a shriek, her face wet with tears. "I want my papa! "

Kenneth sobbed harder, burrowing into the embrace of his sister, completely unable to speak.

A wince passed over the Earl's face. It felt to Louisa like this might not be the first time this had happened. He looked worn thin with worry, like he was barely managing to stand straight, let alone manage this tragic scene.

The children were sobbing louder, the Earl looked stoic and miserable, and it crossed Louisa's mind that perhaps this, this here was why he had married her. This was what he didn't know how to handle, this was what he didn't know how to do.

She could remember, stark with pain and grief, the nights when Penelope would cry out for mother after she had died, and it would be her and Alexandra's job to soothe her before papa could hear. She remembered how words would not work, because there were no words that could soothe a pain like this.

So she knew what to do now.

She darted past Cedric and flung herself onto her knees in front of both children, wrapping her arms around the pair of them as tightly as she could. "Oh darlings," she murmured. "I am so sorry. I am here now. I am here. It might be dark, but we have lit the lights, see? And can you see your uncle? He will chase away any nightmares for you Kenneth, I promise. I am here now and I will hold you as long as you need."

Louisa had been a little worried that Abigail might push her away. The little girl had so far been the most suspicious and resistant to her, clearly protective of her brother and wary of anyone who might hurt them further. But Abigail was just as quick as Kenneth to lean into her embrace and cry into her shoulder, the little bodies going limp in her arms from exhaustion and pain.

"That's it," Louisa said, her voice breaking a little in relief that this was working. "That's it, you let me hold you. You are not doing anything wrong. It's been a long night and a hard night and I know you must be sleepy. It will be all right now. Both I and your uncle will make sure that you are safe, all right? We will make sure that you get to sleep. It's all right, my dear."

She kept on murmuring sweet soft things, things to soothe and comfort until the crying became sniffles and hiccups and little whimpers and then petered out altogether, leaving her with two children who were limp with exhaustion and grief, but soothed from the hysteria that she had found them in.

"All right now," Louisa said cheerfully, keeping her voice light and soft. "Abigail, my darling, I am sure you don't want to be separated from Kenneth right now so why don't you crawl beneath the covers?"

"Mrs. Brook says…" Abigail started but Louisa shook her head.

"Mrs. Brook is very wise, but Mrs. Brook doesn't know about secret exceptions, does she?" she saw Kenneth mouthing the word exception, tasting it and testing it out. "No she does not. And in a very special secret exception I think the two of you will be happier tonight in one bed, don't you?"

Both children nodded solemnly, their little pale faces streaked with the stains of tears. Louisa helped Abigail into the bed and then found a washbasin and wet a cloth, gently wiping their faces and tucking them in.

"Wonderful, now then. You may have a song or a story, which would you like?"

"Story!" Kenneth said eagerly, and Abigail looked like she wouldn't disagree with him, so Louisa smiled.

"Once upon a time there was a little girl," she started, and Kenneth made a noise of disappointment.

"It's always a girl in these stories, why can't one be about a little boy like me?"

"I will tell you so many about little boys," she assured him. "There are a lot, I am sure you have even heard some before like Tom Thumb and Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, correct?" he nodded slowly. "Exactly, so this story is about a little girl and also about a little wolf. The wolf is a little boy, so you see there is a character for each of you."

"Oh!" Kenneth said, excited. "I would like to be a wolf!"

"No, you'd eat people," Abigail protested, giggling. "You would have a tail!"

"She is quite right," Cedric said, stepping closer to them. "All wolves have tails and tails are very inconvenient."

"Have you had a tail, Uncle Cedric?" Kenneth asked seriously, so seriously that Louisa had to fight not to laugh.

"Anyway," she said firmly. "This little girl lived in a red house in the middle of the forest and her very best friend in all the world was the son of the Wolf King, a young wolf prince with black fur who went with her everywhere. They had many adventures, but the one I am going to tell you about is the time that they tried to find the Duke of the Birds and convince him to end the war between the birds and the fish."

"Why would they be at war?" Abigail asked suspiciously. "A bird can't swim and a fish can't fly."

"Exactly," Kenneth said. "They would not be in each other's' terr-tories."

"Very clever," Louisa said warmly. "And very true. But sometimes wars do not happen for sensible reasons. In this case a ring that the Duke of the Birds loved very much had fallen from his claw and fallen into the lake and the Emperor of the Fish had eaten it."

"That's not fair!" Abigail protested. "It was the Bird Duke's!"

"Just so. This is why there was a war. And this is why the girl and the wolf had to walk all the way across the forest past the great castle made of cake, and the strange old witch's hut that walked around on chicken legs! Then they tricked the strange fairy people who lived under the ground to make sure there was peace."

Both children were watching her now with interested and sleepy eyes and Louisa felt encouraged to delve even further into the story world that she had developed. She painted a picture of the cake castle that had been left in the forest by an old and forgetful giant who had been taking it to his daughter's wedding but had put it down and forgotten about it. How a whole group of moles had turned it into a castle by eating tunnels into it and how the girl and the wolf ended up running away with one of the chimneys which was made out of marzipan and tasted very fine.

She told them about a grand ball in the fairy kingdom and all the beautiful finery and dances, spinning lovely soft tales until the children's eyes closed at last and they were asleep.

She almost ruined all of her hard work then by shrieking when a hand landed on her shoulder but she managed to claw it back in time, whirling to see Cedric standing just behind her.

His exhaustion was even more evident this close. There were lines of worry on his face and circles beneath his eyes that she had not noticed before and she had to wonder to herself how long he had been pretending everything was all right so no one would notice that nothing was.

"Come," he said softly. "Join me in my study. I think they will be all right for now."

Considering that the last time she had been in his study it had been so he would tell her not to disobey him on the matter of the children, it should perhaps have concerned her more, but she felt strangely at peace with him at this moment. They were no longer at war. They had found an understanding, and she was curious to see where that understanding would take them.